


The Hounds of Bakersfield

by coyotesuspect



Series: demons & their kin (tortall/spn fusion verse) [2]
Category: The Immortals - Tamora Pierce, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 10:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4476122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotesuspect/pseuds/coyotesuspect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daine and Numair are investigating reports of black dogs in Bakersfield, California. But they quickly realize there's more to the case than there seems.</p><p>Tortall/Supernatural fusion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hounds of Bakersfield

Bakersfield accumulates out of the southern California smog in slow degrees. It starts in a trickle of low, boxy buildings, bleak against the dusty earth of the inland empire. And then they hit the green edge of plant-life that marks civilization in this state, the places where water has been wrenched from the ground and dispersed. But even that spiteful green is dusty and desaturated; all of Bakersfield is desaturated, the color and texture of an old home movie in the late afternoon light. 

They pass under a yellow Bakersfield sign that arches across the road, and the AC finally kicks on with a sound like gravel being spilled. The vents have been spitting warm air at them since Blythe. But Daine’s minivan is a temperamental old beast, and probably thought it would have been too soft to let the AC work before that. 

Numair surreptitiously checks the temperature on his phone – Daine hates when he looks at his phone while driving. It’s 100 degrees outside, and probably just as warm inside the car. He’s not used to heat like this. Louisiana was hot, but that was a humid, wilting heat, draping and drowsy.

The heat here burns right through you and drives you straight into the ground. Or maybe it’s just been a long time – New Haven and Oxford a long way and an entire lifetime – since his childhood along Crane River. He can’t handle the highs any more. 

Daine, at least, seems bothered by the heat too. Her hair is pulled off up her neck – though several curls have defected as usual – and her cheeks are flushed. The cat asleep on her lap probably doesn’t help. 

“We’ll have a motel with real AC soon,” says Numair, attempting cheerfulness. The station they’re listening to goes to commercial and Numair entertains himself for a second by trying to find a new one. He hates commercials with a passion Daine seems to find somewhere between endearing and ridiculous. 

Daine scowls at him now though and pats the dashboard. She isn’t quite able to hide her wince from the heat. 

“Cloud’s got real AC,” she says loyally. “She just doesn’t like to spoil us.” 

Daine’s sentiment is entirely too close to Numair’s own thoughts for him to be comfortable. He shouldn’t be personifying a _car_. And lurking beneath his thought is the half-formed worry that he’s already letting Daine affect him too much. 

“Cloud has,” he corrects, agitated. 

Daine rolls her eyes and shifts Kitten off her lap. She digs some papers out of the glove compartment – the case file, Numair notes. Daine’s been reading from them off and on since Numair took over the driving shift. He’s not sure what else new she’ll find in them now. Her neck and shoulders are gleaming. Numair frowns at the road, slowing down now that they’re inside something resembling human habitation. 

“Are we sure it’s black dogs?” asks Daine. In his periphery, he sees her tug at one of her rebellious curls. 

“Do you have another hypothesis?” 

“No,” says Daine slowly. “But I don’t think it’s black dogs.” 

“Why?” asks Numair, though not accusingly. He’s only worked with Daine for a few months, but he already trusts her instincts, especially in matters regarding cryptids. 

They are, of course, only in Bakersfield because they believe the deaths of two men to be the work of black dogs. Two weeks before Numair had watched Daine successfully convince a lake monster in Lake Erie to stop attacking swimmers. A couple apparently wild-animal related mutilations in Bakersfield over the past week means an opportunity to see if Daine’s ability extends to other beasts. 

And, if it doesn’t, Numair has decent aim and a fresh cache of silver and iron bullets. He’s not an idiot. 

Daine straightens up and closes her eyes. Numair feels a tug of _something_ – of Daine’s unique energy unspooling from within and being cast out. She’s silent for a moment, then, she speaks: “I don’t feel any.” 

“Do you feel anything else?” asks Numair. He’s unsure if it’s the right question to ask. He and Daine are still trying to map out the extent and ability of her powers. There’s nothing like her in any of the credible sources he knows of. But maybe that’s the problem, he thinks. He’s too stuck on what’s credible, and Daine is not a very credible person. He thinks about his mother’s saints, Saint Francis in particular. He’s seen birds cling to Daine’s hair and clothes much the same.

He glances at Daine. She’s making an expression like someone wiggling at a loose tooth with their tongue – perplexed, turned inward. 

“I don’t know,” she says reluctantly. “There’s something weird going on. I just don’t know what yet.” 

She perks up, eyes brightening on a motel sign. 

“Look, they have a vacancy.” 

Numair pulls in to the parking lot and then goes to get a room. He eyes the Alaska plates on Cloud uneasily as he passes. They’re memorable, but Daine won’t let him change them. 

***

Numair has the name of a dive bar the last victim was a regular at. They go after dinner and another review of their files. Even if Daine doesn’t think it’s black dogs, they still need to investigate. 

The bar’s downtown, located in a street that’s little better than an alley. Daine gets in with a fake George made her and a bold-as-you-please smile. He should be more worried his charge is turning into an experienced conwoman, but mostly it just makes him feel relieved. Anything that will help her survive at this point is good with him. 

Numair goes to the bar and Daine drifts towards a game of darts in the back. Numair feels a pain in his upper back and neck that’s not entirely attributable to hours jammed in a car that’s a little too small for him. 

“Can I get you something?” asks the bartender. Early Tuesday night and the crowd is just starting to shuffle in. It makes Numair the most interesting thing at the bar. 

Numair smiles easily and gets something on tap. He keeps Daine in the corner of his eye. He can pick out her laugh above the pool clatter and chatter and music of the bar. Alanna told him she was shy around men when Onua first brought her to Pirate’s Swoop, but three months tending bar and serving had apparently cured her of that. 

“Friend of yours?” asks the bartender as she passes him his drink. She nods at Daine. 

Numair glances over his shoulder. Daine has an audience. 

He shrugs and leans against the bar and directs another smile at the bartender. 

“Something like that,” he says. 

The bartender’s name, he soon learns, is Poppy, and she knew the last victim pretty well. 

“He kept seeing dogs,” says Poppy, another, stiffer drink later. “Big, ugly dogs, following him around.” 

“And no one else ever saw them?” asks Numair. His mouth has gone dry. 

Poppy shrugs. “I didn’t. The animal control guys didn’t.” She pauses and frowns. It’s rather pretty. “You don’t think he was having a psychotic break?”

“Anything is possible,” says Numair. 

In the corner of his eye, he sees Daine win at darts. 

“Buy you a drink?” she asks a few seconds later, wedging in next to Numair. She has a handful of cash. The look she gives the bartender is possessive. 

Numair pats her shoulder and finishes his current drink. “I think it’s time we left, actually.” 

***

He waits until Daine is in the shower to pick up the phone. 

“It’s hellhounds,” he says flatly. 

“It’s nice to hear from you, too, Numair,” says Alanna. “How are you this evening?” 

“Alanna,” he snaps. “I’m being serious.” 

“You’re always serious, even when you’re not, Numair. I don’t know what you expect me to do about hellhounds.” 

“Presumably someone should do something about the demon associated with the hellhounds.”

Alanna sighs. “I’m in Montana, but Raoul and Buri might be nearby. They were working a shifter in Stockton. I’ll give Raoul a call. And Numair?”

“Yes?”

“It’s a Crossroads Demon. It’s going to be much more concerned with its collections than with you.” She pauses, and adds meaningfully, “Or with Daine. Try not to panic.” 

Numair gulps air and nods. 

“Okay,” he says. “Thanks.” 

He hangs up. Sometimes he just needs someone to tell him he’s being an idiot. It’s a job Alanna is only too happy to do. 

He reviews what he knows about Daine: her family died in a fire two years ago, Onua found her living out of Cloud with a pack of particularly smart, peculiarly tame Waheela in the Northern Territories, she’s wanted dead by at least a couple hunters for being clearly unnatural and in league with evil, she has already saved Numair’s life on more occasions than he cares to admit. Whatever Daine is, she isn’t telling, if she even knows – and, at this point, Numair doubts she does. But he’d rather die himself than give a demon the opportunity to investigate Daine itself. 

He leaves an extra thick line of salt across the window sill and around the door that night.

***

Numair wakes like someone surfacing from the water. A note of wrongness jangles warningly. 

Ozorne is leaning over Daine. One hand hovers above her head. Even in the dim light, Numair can tell he hasn’t aged a day in the eight years since Numair last saw him. 

“She’s not one of mine.” Ozorne’s eyes gleam yellow as he straightens up, catching the moonlight like a cat’s. “She _is_ curious. You always had a knack for finding the most bizarre creatures, Arram.”

Bile rises in Numair’s throat, but he lies there paralyzed. Panic kicks like trapped child inside his chest. Daine sleeps peacefully, mouth open, hair mussed. 

Ozorne regards Numair thoughtfully. 

“I don’t know why you’ve been so distant. You know he’s still in here, Arram. He’s still _me_. Won’t you say hello?” 

“Christo,” spits Numair. He’s terrified. 

A cheek muscle jumps in Ozorne’s face. He smiles, wide and mocking, and rounds Daine’s bed to settle on Numair’s. His weight dips Numair towards him, and Numair tries to sit up and move away, but his body won’t respond to his mind. Ozorne touches Numair’s temple and smooths the hair there. 

“How can you be mad?” he asks. His fingers trace Numair’s hairline across his face, then over the shell of his ear. “The two of us got _exactly_ what we wanted.” 

Numair trembles with the effort to rise. Ozorne laughs, an ugly, hollow sound, water dripping in a cave. 

“It’s not you I’m interested in tonight, though. I just want to see exactly what your little one can do.”

The weight disappears from his chest, as Kitten flings herself off Numair with a yowl, in the direction of Ozorne. Numair wakes for real with a gasp, neck slimy with sweat, and Kitten lands in the spot where Ozorne had been sitting in Numair's dream. She hisses and spits, back arched. Ozorne’s gone. If he ever was there. There’s no moonlight, no stench of sulfur. 

There’s no Daine. 

The bed next to Numair’s is empty. He leaps from the bed and checks the bathroom, no Daine. He rushes outside. The parking lot is empty. She’s not inside Cloud, either. She has done that occasionally, especially the first couple weeks they traveled together. He would find her sleeping outside or in the car. George had told him she’d done the same while living with him and Alanna. It was a worrisome habit then. Drunk hunters aren’t famous for respecting women. It’s even more worrisome now that Numair and Daine mainly live out of motels. 

“Daine!” he yells. “Daine!” 

A light flicks on in one of the rooms. Someone shouts, “Shut the fuck up!” They don’t sound a thing like Daine.

He goes back inside, mind churning with fear.

Alanna is the scryer. But he at least has mugwort and a smudging bowl. He burns the mugwort and digs his tarot deck from his bag. He tries not to think beyond what’s required for each step, and his body moves stiffly, mechanically. 

Daine, he thinks as he fumbles through shuffling the deck. Tendrils of smoke drift up and he inhales the pungent smell of burning mugwort. Their room is going to smell like cannabis for hours. Daine, where is Daine? 

He tries to steady his breathing, and he focuses on Daine. It’s hard; fear keeps slicking in. Ozorne was here and now is gone and so is Daine. They should have left the city as soon as he realized demons were involved.

Kitten rubs against his leg and his breathing evens, his mind sharpens. He pictures her stubborn chin and her halo’d curls, her blue-grey eyes and the tattoo of a badger’s claw beneath her collarbone that she can’t, or won’t, explain. He pictures her in the sunlight, sitting beside him in the car. 

He pulls the first card – Strength, a beautiful woman clasping closed the jaw of a lion. He’s never noticed before how much the illustration looks like Daine. He pulls the next and has to laugh, bewildered and hysterical at the imagery – nine of swords: a man sitting up in bed, holding his face, the room dark and nine swords hanging parallel behind him. The cards haven’t told himself anything he doesn’t know yet. 

He takes another deep breath of the mugwort and pulls the third card: ten of swords, reversed. 

He pauses, uncertain. Did he shuffle the cards well enough? But swords have always been his suit.

It’s a grim image, a man laying dead on the ground, ten swords thrust through him. But there's a potentially hopeful reading: inevitable end, or, recovery. His vision starts to blur as he takes in the three cards, bright colors muted in the dark motel room.

A compass needle swings in his mind, and he locks onto Daine’s location.

It’s not so much a map, as a pull. She’s not that far away. He grabs the keys from the nightstand and throws on his shoes and pants. He’s in the car within less than a minute.

This isn’t how scrying is supposed to work. It’s not how it works for Alanna. The source of the talents that make Numair such a useful ally, an ideal mentor for Daine and detective of her origins, is exactly the reasons he should be neither ally nor mentor.

Cloud starts with a grumble but no argument. Kitten prances nervously on the seat next to him. He has no recollection of her following him out of the motel, let alone getting in the van with him. But there’s no time for that. The knowledge of Daine’s location is a riptide and his body obeys. He drives quickly, but more smoothly than he can believe. He knows where she is, and he has to get there without getting pulled over by any cops looking for late night drunk drivers. 

He pulls up ten minutes later – almost seven miles; did Daine _walk_ all this way? – at a vacant lot. He jumps out of Cloud without closing the door. Dimly, he’s aware of Kitten leaping out after him. 

He comes to an abrupt halt. 

Daine is kneeling in the cracked earth and dying weeds of the lot. A scythe of hellhounds surround her, silent, their muzzles obediently flat against the dirt. Daine’s eyes are blank; each arm is outstretched and the palm upturned. Her hair is down. She looks like a bodhisattva statue, a figure of mercy in eternal repose, a transcendent being. 

She frightens him when she likes this. He’ll never tell her. He’ll tell her when he’s scared _for_ her – believes sympathy for him might stay her when self-preservation won’t. 

Daine leans forward in a slow, measured movement, bringing her face close to that of the centermost dog. Numair twitches with the effort from not running into the semicircle and scooping her up. He has seen firsthand exactly the kind of damage a hellhound can do. 

They are large, ugly things, dog-like only because no other earthly creature is comparable. They are to a Rottweiler what a Rottweiler is to a Jack Russel Terrier. 

Daine takes the hound’s head in her hands, which are themselves not much bigger than the creature’s ears. She turns her face and whispers into one ear, then moves her head and whispers into the other. 

The hound whines and paws at the earth, leaving a score of claw marks. Saliva dribbles from its lips and the ground smokes where the spit lands. 

Daine growls and the hound whines again. Both are hair-raising noises. The skin on Numair’s scalp prickles and crawls. There are spells he could use – fire or acid would both give him enough time to get Daine to Cloud and drive away. He doesn’t think the hellhounds would pursue. They’re predictable. They already have their quarry to worry about.

Then, reluctantly, the first hellhound stands. The other hellhounds stand with it. Daine pats the leader’s nose. 

There’s a horrible, ripping noise and a feeling like all the air being sucked out of a room. Numair’s ears burst from the drop in air pressure, and he yells. He clasps his hands over his ears and drops to his knees, whole body clanging with pain. 

When he opens his eyes, the hounds are gone, and Daine stands before him. She’s barefoot and wearing her pajamas, Numair notes dispassionately. He’s looking down at both of them, the tall man and the barefoot girl. 

“Numair?” says Daine uncertainly.

He takes a deep breath. His throat and chest are raw and the air scrapes along. 

“Daine,” he says. His voice comes from very far away. “How are you?”

“I’m okay,” says Daine, swaying. “Where are we?” 

She collapses. 

His mind returns to his body just in time to catch her. 

He’s going to kill her.

***

“What did you do?” he asks, when she wakes up, twelve hours later. 

“Coffee,” she moans in response. 

He gets up and pours her a cup from the pot he made an hour earlier. Daine makes a face at the bitter taste, but doesn’t protest. 

“Food?” she asks hopefully, after the cup of coffee is finished. 

Numair tosses her a bag of bagels. They’d been out of food that morning, but he’d been unwilling to go out and leave Daine alone until Kitten had jumped onto Daine’s sleeping form and chittered at him angrily. Kitten would look after Daine, and Numair had believed her, had understood and believed a three month old cat. He’s going crazy. 

“I sent them home,” says Daine eventually, on her third cup of coffee and halfway through her second bagel. Numair stops his pacing. “I could hear them all across the city. There was a whole chain of people who sold their souls here. But I told the pack they couldn’t take no one else and I sent them home.” 

Numair frowns. “I didn’t know you could do that.” 

Daine looks up at him. Her hair is a frizzy nest and she’s still in the tanktop and high school gym shorts she slept in – that she banished the hellhounds in. With her bagel and cup of coffee she could be any sleepy, slouchy eighteen year old, getting ready for freshman civ or a shift at Starbucks. He wishes she could be one of those eighteen year olds. 

“I didn’t know I could do that either.” 

“Do you think they’ll be back?” he asks. 

“No,” says Daine hesitantly. 

He raises his eyebrows at her. “But…?” 

“But, they seemed to think someone else would come for the rest. Another pack, or….” She grimaces. “Their _master_.” She pauses. “There’s another four people, Numair.”

Numair nods sympathetically. He’s sure whatever crossroads demon ( _Ozorne_ , supplies his treacherous mind) that sent them is already wondering where its overdue souls are. All the more reason to leave as soon as possible. He packed all their stuff while Daine was sleeping. 

“It’s very hard to break a deal with a crossroads demon, Daine,” he says. “In fact, there are only apocryphal cases to suggest it can even be done.”

Daine frowns. “Apocryphal?” 

“From an unreliable source,” supplies Numair. 

Daine nods and looks at her coffee. 

“It was very good of you to buy those people time,” he says gently.

“It’s not going to do much good in the end though, is it? It doesn’t fix anything for them.” 

“They knew what they were doing, Daine.”

She looks up at him, jaw set. There are bright tears in the corners of her eyes. “Did they?” 

He looks back at her and says nothing. He wants to tell her they did. He wants it to be true. He knows they didn’t. How can anyone truly understand what Hell means?

Daine sighs and tosses her coffee cup into the trash can with the easy precision that won her fifty dollars the night before. 

“I guess it’s not fair to think you know everything,” she says. She wipes at her eyes with her forearm.

Numair laughs gently and finally allows himself to sit down next to her, and Daine immediately goes to his side. He puts his arm around her and holds her loosely to his chest. It’s a poor substitute for how closely he wants to hold her. He doesn’t know if he can do this, sometimes – be her mentor and her friend and her guardian and this, this whatever else that thrums dangerously beneath the surface of all their interactions. 

“I know some things,” he says quietly. “And I called Alanna last night. Raoul and Buri are going to see about stopping the demon.”

“Why can’t we?” demands Daine. She butts her head gently against his shoulder. “They can’t do what I did.”

“Because,” says Numair, more evenly than he feels, “neither you nor I have the experience with actual demons that they do.”

The real answer is that he’s terrified and he wants to get Daine as far from Ozorne as possible. But there are some things Daine doesn’t need to know. 

Daine huffs. 

He cups her chin and tilts her face up. Daine lets him, but wrinkles her nose at him. There’s sleep still in the inward corner of her eyes, and fine creases along the side of her face from sleeping on her hair. She should look vulnerable, but she just looks solid, calm, comforting. He pictures the Daine of last night, awesome and unreal. He has a hard time holding that Daine in the same picture as this one. 

“Numair?” says Daine uncertainly. 

He drops his hand but pulls her to him and hugs her tightly. 

“Also I was worried about you,” he admits. “Run off like that again and I’ll feed you to the hellhounds myself.” 

Daine laughs grudgingly into his shoulder.

“So where next?” she asks. 

He rests his chin on the top of her head and lets himself feel her heartbeat.

“Why don’t we go somewhere cooler?” 

***

They go north, to the mountains. They drive up the gullet of California to where Tahoe hangs like an oil painting and the air is thick with dark pine. The Central Valley is a dying land in July’s heat, but the mountains are still green and cool. 

Numair talks to her about hellhounds and Faustian bargains most of the way. Daine seems incredulous that anyone would sell their soul for any reason, until his eyes meet hers in the rearview mirror and he asks, “There’s nothing you wouldn’t sacrifice yourself for? If you could have anything?”

Daine frowns. 

“I guess for Ma and Grandpa back, but… I don’t think either of them would be very happy with me about it. Especially if I gave up my soul.” She frowns harder and then admits reluctantly, “But I guess I can see why someone else would do it.”

Numair reaches over and squeezes her shoulder. It’s only further proof that Daine is a better person at eighteen than he was at twenty-four. It’s not surprising. She’s a better person than he is now. 

“What do you think they did it for?” asks Daine. 

“I don’t know,” says Numair. He hadn’t talked to Poppy long enough to hear any mention of the miraculous in her friend’s life, something marvelous from ten years before. Maybe she doesn’t even know about any such event. “Would it make it easier if you knew?”

Daine bows her head and scritches behind Kitten’s ears. 

“I don’t know. Maybe if it was for power or fame, that’d be easier than if they did it to help someone they loved. But. Not really. It’s crummy no matter what.”

Numair nods, and he thinks about the terra incognito of the human heart.

***

They sleep in the back of Cloud that night, in a nest of blankets and pillows. It’s still new, this relationship tangling between them, but Numair has tried hard to set down boundaries. Kitten takes her place in between the two of them, a tiny, feline buffer state. Numair curls away, careful even here to avoid the whisper of impropriety. 

Daine sits up suddenly. 

“You could see them,” she says. 

“Mrrgh?” says Numair into his pillow, but he’s gone still. His pulse jumps double dutch in his throat. 

“You could see the hellhounds,” says Daine, and he can hear in her voice the stunned hurt as she realizes what that means. “You said only people who’d sold their souls could see them. _I_ couldn’t even see them. Not proper.”

He sits up slowly and takes a moment to pull his hair back. Daine’s twisted her body towards him. He can tell even in the darkness that her eyes are wide and betrayed. 

“Yes,” he says, mouth drawn down. “I could.” 

Daine gasps and reaches a hand towards him. He can tell it’s a reflexive action, like someone reaching for a drowning man they have no hope of reaching in time to save. It’s a natural, empathetic motion. 

He takes her hand. 

“How long?” she asks, after a second.

“Two years,” he says. 

He squeezes her hand and brings it to his face, presses his cheekbone against her knuckles. Her hand is warm, surprisingly callused for a girl her age. She uncurls it and palms his face, and her thumb follows the line of his cheekbone. They’re confession close. Numair watches her face and his resolve goes freewheeling through the void. He can see how the rest of this conversation will go – declarations of resolve, Daine’s fierce determination to get him out of this, Numair apologizing. And he does owe it to her to apologize – this girl who has given him a reason beyond his own fear to avoid his fate. 

He doesn’t want that conversation. It’s not fair to let Daine hope. Instead, he pulls her forward, into his lap. She makes a staccato noise somewhere between a gasp and a sob and a laugh, and he lets her kiss him, sweet and desperate, in the green-black dark.

**Author's Note:**

> NEGL, this was set in Bakersfield just so I could make the title pun. Thanks for reading!


End file.
